RIGHTS: Sweet 16 Marriages Cause Controversy in Malawi

Malawi's president, Bingu wa Mutharika, has come under severe pressure from civil society groups who are demanding he scrap a newly-passed bill allowing 16-year-olds to marry with the consent of their parents.

VIETNAM: Sex Selection Skews Sex Ratio

Vietnam is something of a regional leader when it comes to gender equality. There are laws against domestic violence and discrimination, and very high female literacy.

NIGERIA: Divorce a Tool To Relegate Women

The high rate of divorce in Kano state, northern Nigeria has become a worrisome phenomenon. Six months ago, an organisation of widows and divorcees tried to stage a massive march through the city of Kano to draw attention to their situation.

NIGERIA: Kano’s Women Still Seeking a Champion

Hajiya Altine Abdullahi cut a chastened figure in February. She was planning a million-strong march of widows and orphans through the streets of the northern Nigerian city of Kano.

INDIA: When Toilets Were as Scarce as Hen’s Teeth

Dr. Bindeshwar Patak, the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate and founder of a grassroots sanitation movement in India, recounts the days before his country's independence in 1947 when toilets were a rare sight in remote villages and towns under British rule.

RIGHTS-UGANDA: Women Score Victory Against Gender-Based Violence

Women are celebrating a hard-won victory for gender rights after intense public protests led to today’s re-arrest of the country’s police boss – a self-confessed wife-killer.

ANGOLA: Teenage School Programme Gives Drop Outs Second Chance at Education

Free primary education for all is an Angolan government policy, but unfortunately this has not translated into a reality that sees all children receiving education.

RIGHTS-GUATEMALA: One Arrest in Gender-Killing Epidemic

"Femicide," or gender-based murder, has reached epidemic proportions in Guatemala. But at least for Rosmery González - one of the more than 700 Guatemalan victims of this crime in 2008 - justice is finally being done with the arrest of her alleged killer earlier this month.

Q&A: "Safe Drinking Water for Astronauts, Not Slum Dwellers"

"We can provide astronauts with a safe supply of drinking water when they travel to the moon, but we cannot provide the same service to slum dwellers in Kibera, Nairobi or Dharavi, Mumbai," Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told a gathering of over 2,400 participants at the annual World Water Week concluding Friday.

Q&A: Knowledge Barriers Key Factor in Sanitation Crisis

Despite longstanding promises by world leaders to halve, by 2015, the number of people without basic sanitation, 2.5 billion still lack access to basic sanitation, and 1.2 billion don't have any form of sanitation at all.

DEVELOPMENT: Soaring Population May Swamp Anti-Poverty Goals

The U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), already undermined by the global financial crisis, are expected to take another hit - this time from rising population growth.

COTE D’IVOIRE: Communities Determined to Preserve Tanoe Swamps Forest*

When a major agribusiness company began clearing the rich reservoir of biodiversity of southeast Côte d'Ivoire's Tanoé Swamps Forest for an oil palm plantation, ecologists and local communities demonstrated in favour of preserving it.

URUGUAY: Countryside Offers Different Kind of Tourism

Uruguayans and tourists from other countries escape the stress of city life and learn about rural living on once prosperous dairy farms and picturesque small farms near the city of Colonia in western Uruguay, where families have found a new livelihood – and way of life – in "agro-ecotourism".

HEALTH: Why Is Viagra Popular and the Condom Controversial?

Why is the popular drug Viagra so praised for its virtues, while the condom is vilified by conservative religious groups among others the world over?

ARGENTINA: Safe Shortcut to Sidestep Illegal Abortion

Tired of calling for the decriminalisation of abortion - the leading cause of maternal death in Argentina - a network of women's rights activists launched a telephone hotline to inform women on a safe abortion method that requires no medical intervention: the use of a pill to terminate pregnancy.

RIGHTS-AFRICA: Elusive Justice for Victims of Gender-Based Violence

Florence Mukambi will always bear the brunt of the country’s post-election violence.

DEVELOPMENT: Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right?

The growing commercialisation of water - and the widespread influence of the bottling industry worldwide - is triggering a rising demand for the legal classification of one of the basic necessities of life as a human right.

POPULATION: UNFPA Partners With Faith-Based Groups

The United Nations has realised that if it wants to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it will have to partner with like-minded faith-based organisations (FBOs).

ASIA: Prescription for HIV/AIDS Pandemic – Social Justice

The prescription that thousands of participants effectively issued at a just- ended AIDS conference here was clear: It is time to fight social and political inequities so that the medical gains in curbing HIV and AIDS can work with maximum efficacy.

HEALTH-ASIA: Where Are the Religious Leaders?

"Thank God for condoms!" Donald Messer of the U.S.-based Centre of Church and Global AIDS declared during one of the many sessions at an AIDS conference for the Asia-Pacific, which ended here Thursday.

ZIMBABWE: No Water, Just a Bill

City council turns off the water. National minister in charge says turn it back on. Domestic and commercial users alike dispute their unpaid bills. The shadow of a cholera epidemic looms over it all. Must be Harare.